, with Pink behind him, heard a cheer and an angry
roar, and, looking up, saw that the old man had disappeared. They found
him there later on, the rifle beside him, his small and valiant figure
looking, with eyes no longer defiant, toward the Heaven which puts, for
its own strange purpose, both evil and good into the same heart.

By eleven o'clock the revolution was over. Sodden groups of men,
thoroughly cowed and frightened, were on their way by back roads to the
places they had left a few hours before. They had no longer dreams of
empire. Behind them they could see, on the horizon, the city itself,
the smoke from its chimneys, the spires of its churches. Both, homes
and churches, they had meant to destroy, but behind both there was the
indestructible. They had failed.

They turned, looked back, and went on.

* * * * *

On the crest of a hill-top overlooking the city a man was standing,
looking down to where the softened towers of the great steel bridges
rose above the river mist like fairy towers. Below him lay the city,
powerful, significant, important.

The man saw the city only as a vast crucible, into which he had flung
his all, and out of which had come only defeat and failure. But the
city was not a crucible. The melting pot of a nation is not a thing of
cities, but of the human soul.

The city was not a melting pot. It was a sanctuary. The man stood silent
and morose, his chin dropped on his chest, and stared down.

Beside and somewhat behind him stood a woman, a somber, passionate
figure, waiting passively. His eyes traveled from the city to her, and
rested on her, contemptuous, thwarted, cynical.

"You fool," he said, "I hate you, and you know it."

But she only smiled faintly. "We'd better get away now, Jim," she said.

He got into the car.

CHAPTER L

Late that afternoon Joe Wilkinson and Dan came slowly up the street,
toward the Boyd house. The light of battle was still in Dan's eyes, his
clothes were torn and his collar missing, and he walked with the fine
swagger of the conqueror.

"Y'ask me," he said, "and I'll tell the world this thing's done for. It
was just as well to let them give it a try, and find out it won't work."

Joe said nothing. He was white and very tired, and a little sick.

"If you don't mind I'll go in your place and wash up," he remarked, as
they neared the house. "I'll scare the kids to death if they see me like
t